


Somewhere Else to Hide

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Hoshido | Birthright Route, No Deeprealms, Serious Injuries, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-11-07 18:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17965796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Deep in Nohrian territory, at the crux of a bloody, brutal war, Sakura realizes just how much Hinoka's condition has deteriorated - and as exhausted and desperate as she is, tries to help.





	Somewhere Else to Hide

The stench struck her first. Even after months of being in hospitals and tents filled with the dead, it still made her stomach twist. There was too much burnt flesh filling the air to have been from Rinkah’s blood. It seared her lungs sharper than anything the wind had carried from the battle with the ice tribe.

Now and then, there was a sour pang on the awful wind, like vomit, and there was blood glistening on the snow and on the wriggles of skinny grass - and there was silence. No murmuring. No retching, no blasting, no clashing – only the horse’s dry huffing, its hooves thumping the ground as Subaki pulled in for a landing.

Nohr was a land of the dead. This forest was taller than any in Hoshido, but the trees seemed darker than the night, their scraggly branches splintering the churning clouds above. Azura had told a story about that, hadn’t she? How the trees were cultivated by those buried alive, their souls waiting thousands of years to seek revenge. What ghosts would wait for them this time?

She twisted to slide off the horse but Subaki swung back and snatched her cloak. When Hana’s footsteps drummed behind them, he swerved the horse to cut her off, and before she could yell at him – an explosion howled. A wave of cold dirt crashed over them. Sakura shielded herself against Subaki as stones peppered her hair and fell down the gaps in her collar.

Silent again.

“That must be Lord Takumi,” Subaki said. He ended it like a question.

“Either a good sign or a really bad sign.” Hana’s eyes were wide and her jaw as tight as Subaki’s back. “Lady Sakura?”

It took a second for her words to come out coherently. “We have to check.”

Hana helped her down, hands tightening on Sakura’s while she surveyed the woods. Then she gripped the hilts of two of her weapons.

Subaki prodded his horse for flight. “I’ll cover you.” 

“Be careful,” Sakura said, and Hana conveyed the same with the glance over her shoulder.

He took off. She and Hana squeezed through the knotted trees, branches nothing like those of Hoshido’s but thin and gangly and clawing, before they abruptly gave way to a blackened, decimated clearing. No - she squinted through the firelight - not entirely decimated. There were bodies. She darted her eyes over each, locked on one who was still breathing, wet but wheezing, and locked the lantern onto a branch and dropped down.

“My lady,” the soldier said, his impassive face gleaming darkly in the light. He wore a hood like Hana’s but most of his clothes were burnt, and his crossed arms did nothing to hide his wounds.

“I’m going to close your wounds so we can get you back home,” she murmured, as if disrupting the quiet would get them all killed, “and then I’ll need to clean them. Can you—”

Hana was at her back with a slick gasp of swords, primed for a jump, until Sakura saw what she saw - Takumi lowering his bow and sliding down a tree trunk, his expression flat. 

“Go.” The soldier’s voice startled her. “He was hurt first.” 

She pursed her lips, unclipped a vial of oil and began the last rites before he pushed, with the last force of his being, her hand away. “I’ll make it. Him, first.”

“I’ll be right back,” and she breathlessly got to her feet.

“Where are your retainers?” Hana asked in a low voice, grip near whitened on her weapons.

“It’s not—!” Takumi winced, his vulnerary sloshing in his shaking hands. “It’s not their fault. We got separated. That blast. Hinoka went up there.” He was out of breath, too. “And what about you. You’re not supposed to be here.”

There were sears across his chest, an arrow in his upper arm, his breaths were shallow and fast. She took the vulnerary out of his hands, warned him it would hurt, rubbed the liquid into the burns to clean them. It wouldn’t be enough. She didn’t tear her eyes from his injuries but asked, “Can you help with the arrow?”

“Mm.” Hana unsheathed a knife. 

Takumi squeezed his eyes shut. “I got him back, though,” he squeaked. “The archer.”

“Even in this condition?” She swallowed to keep her voice from cracking, though it did nothing for the stammer. “You’re very strong, Takumi.”

It must have sounded convincing, because some tension in his muscles went loose even if he didn’t open his eyes. He gritted his teeth when Hana pulled out the arrow, and Sakura invoked the festal and his eyes flew open with a cry like he’d been shot all over again, and he spluttered—

“It’s over,” she told him.

“It’s hot,” he murmured, touching his closed wounds, pinching skin.

And she felt cold, wanted to rub her hands and curl up warm. Instead, procedure:

“You can move?” He stood up and stretched. “It doesn’t hurt?” He swung his arm around and around. She ran through the questions without stuttering and only stopped to thank Hana for binding the animal pelts tighter around her shivering body.

“You should come back with us,” Sakura finished. “I didn’t clean that as best as I could.”

“No! I—” He seemed startled at his own outburst, startled that she didn’t flinch. “I have to keep fighting. Everyone else is out there.” He cracked a hesitant smile and got to his feet. “I can’t let my big sisters show me up, right?”

“Um, Takumi—”

He tensed into a run but stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Be careful going back. In case that malig is around.”

“I will—” 

He took off before another word, abruptly swallowed into the dark. She watched the spot where he had been standing for a moment longer before the realization sunk her stomach, and she whipped around - the soldier’s eyes were still open. But he wasn’t moving.

Takumi would have been fine if he had waited. If she had gone for this man first - she knew him, she thought. She recognized him, from the number of times he came to be healed, always asking for papers so he could write to his daughter.

Hana rolled the man onto his side, didn’t bother trying to close his eyes – stories always made it seem much easier than it actually was – and slipped back to Sakura’s side. She remained close to Sakura, somehow warm, as she whistled the all-clear to Subaki.

She got his response, then it was silent again.

“Lady Sakura.”

The more she looked around at the dead, the more people she saw, the more people she knew, from what remained of them.

“Sakura?”

That, she heard. She looked at Hana, who lowered herself into the light so Sakura could see her face better, solemn as it was.

“Let’s go. Others need your help.”

But Hana sat there for as long as Sakura did, one hand on a throwing club and the other around Sakura’s back and pitching a sword in the dirt. Sakura waited for a few seconds longer than she needed to before she rose to her feet, and went back.

 

There was a general order to the way people came home. Backline soldiers, such as Takumi and his retainers, returned first. Takumi in particular always tried to sneak around Sakura to one of the monks to heal his fresh wounds. Either so she wouldn’t worry, or so Takumi wouldn’t admit to her that he made some kind of mistake.

No one knew exactly when the ninja returned, only that they were suddenly in camp. She guessed Ryoma sent Kagero and Saizo ahead with Corrin and Azura to ensure their safety, now that Kaze was no longer there to do it.

Ryoma always came last, as if herding a flock home. Reina, too, red all over her hands and her crowing kinshi. The other fliers were scattered in between, so, often, Hinoka would land, corral Azama into healing her, then eat with Sakura and ask how she was doing and then leave.

This time, however, Hinoka was late.

After casting a sleepless gaze over the sounded, the superior maiden who ran the healing operations decided it would be ‘manageable’ for Sakura to go out and wait for her family, so instead, she worked at fixing a sky knight’s leg. Sometimes she trained her ear outside the trench, the way the outside was increasingly filled with familiar voices. Oboro calling out - Gods, Rinkah, we lost track of you back there, Rinkah’s reply, Yeah, no, you’re not weaseling out of learning how to eat right, even if I gotta be a ghost to do it—

Ryoma came in with a chilly gust through the tent flap, the soldiers all trying to sit up for him even as he barked for them to remain at ease. He put his hand on Sakura’s shoulder. “Did Hinoka come through here?”

“N-no. Why?”

He put on a steely expression. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing.”

Another healer bowed her head to Sakura, whose hands were frozen on the gauze. She let go and let the healer work instead. “I know what you just said, but—”

“Hey!” That was Reina’s voice— “We need help!”

Sakura was running before Ryoma even twitched.

She lifted the tarp door just as the wind ripped it out of her fingers, vibrant hair the first thing Sakura saw while both Reina and Subaki were helping Hinoka down, even as she squirmed in their grip. “Stop—” Though her words came out like her tongue was cut out— “I’m not—”

“Grab her,” Reina snapped at the crowd, switching her head over her shoulders like a compulsion, “get her down the slope - Lady Sakura.”

“No, get Azama—”

“Lady Sakura,” Subaki murmured, lowering Hinoka onto a cart. She tried to get out with small wriggles. His hands were dark and wet. “What do we do?”

Sakura wasn’t sure what she was seeing until it was there before her eyes, bruises swelling Hinoka’s face and blood coming out of her mouth and that was just what everyone around her was allowing Sakura to see. It seemed like Hinoka didn’t even notice how her right arm was at a sickening angle from her body.

“We need to get her inside.”

“No,” Hinoka slurred, “it’s fine—” 

Her pupils were dilated even in the light. She was blinking hard and fast, speaking between shattered gasps.

“Hinoka, I need to check on your head. Okay?”

“Just take her,” she told Reina and Subaki, then shot back to Hinoka. “Someone else is going to check on your horse, alright? You don’t have to worry about him.”

“Cor— Cor—”

She kept talking to her as they moved into the medical bay because if Hinoka was replying, she was at least alive, and, from what Sakura understood of her words, somewhat aware.

It was always hard to tell how bad it was with Hinoka, her hair covering up any head injuries. She’d been dealt horrifying blows and came out of them stoic and brave as ever, but she had never ended a battle in this state: Limbs like a broken marionette, barely capable of words. Every fight made her come home looking even worse.

Sakura didn’t know why she didn’t even feel afraid. She didn’t feel anything, and her hands moved by themselves.

They unclipped Hinoka’s cloak and hung it up for privacy, then Subaki left so Reina could take off Hinoka’s armor - some of it melted but not melted on her, and a shoulder and leg were out of socket, there were bruises, hammered blows, blood from broken skin and broken bones. Working with too much haste would heal her in the wrong ways, had to check on her head further before healing – she hoped they wouldn’t have to bleed out the skull. She hoped.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, yanking a light into their faces.

“There was—” Hinoka tried moving her mouth, then shook her head.

“It’s fine,” Sakura mumbled. “Tell me if this hurts—”

“Ow!”

Cold blood on the side of her head. The other places didn’t hurt which was a good sign, but at the same time a strike to the head didn’t seem— She had to act fast.

“It must have been Berserk.”

“What?”

“Berserk,” Reina said in a low voice. “The spell.”

“Thank you.”

Sakura had heard of berserk staves, mostly unused in Nohrian warfare for their unreliability, but the Nohrians must have been desperate. Work was quick after that, Reina skilled at setting bones and dislocations and Hinoka tolerating the procedure without a sound except for saying her increasingly coherent thanks every now and then. At the end, while Sakura washed Hinoka’s face, she asked her three times what had happened in the fight - to make sure the story was consistent. That there wasn’t any lasting damage.

“A malig launched some exploding spell near Takumi’s position, and I went in to fight him, but there was this - shocking in my head, I - I don’t know, I’ve already said this, is everyone okay?”

“Everyone is - no, no, Hinoka, please—”

“I feel fine,” Hinoka said, shoving Sakura’s hand away as she got to her feet, but stumbled and threw out her hands and fell against the dirt wall, fingers scrabbling against tarp before she smacked on the ground, breathing hard.

“You can’t walk, can you?”

“I’m just dizzy.” She shook her head. “Godsdamned – Nohrian – scum.” In spite of her injury she punched the ground and made Sakura jump, briefly thought of that fist striking people, striking—

Don’t say that, she thought about telling Hinoka, but crouched to her level instead.

For hours, maybe, Hinoka had been flying, let alone fighting, just like this. 

She had a monk as her servant, and never went to see him, not once.

Sakura had to decide.

“I’ll prepare a place for you to sleep. Your head probably just needs time to heal,” she said, a little louder, because her heart was skipping and she could sense the others crowded outside the makeshift door, listening in. 

“It’s fine. I don’t need to walk to ride a horse.”

“You need to rest.”

Hinoka looked defeated, her face twitching into something pained and miserable, but nodded.

“How long?”

“A few days. I mean - I mean, a few hours. But it could be a few days. Until, I don’t know, you can…walk. Again.”

Hinoka looked frightened. Her wide eyes went to Reina, then to Sakura. “A few days. We don’t have a few days.”

She didn’t know how Hinoka would react to the truth: That it would be months to safely recover. At best. “You will die like this if you go out.”

“And if I don’t, we’re all going to die. Do you realize that?” Hinoka hastily bowed her head and looked away. “I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just – I’m worried.”

Sakura felt Reina’s gaze boring into the back of her head. “I don’t know for sure,” she stammered, her voice falling into a mumble, and Hinoka didn’t seem to be listening anyway so she didn’t bother speaking up, “maybe we should just wait and see what happens and we’ll see…maybe…if you’ll get better. Reina, can, can you get her into bed?”

“May you repeat that, Lady Sakura?”

“Can you get her into bed. Hinoka.”

Sakura stayed just long enough to watch Reina ease her arm around Hinoka’s shoulders, then ducked through the cloak. Ryoma’s face looked stiff as ice, and Corrin’s mouth moved for the right words to say. Setsuna still stared at Hinoka’s cloak like she could see through it before Azama twisted her away with an exasperated smile.

“Lady Sakura,” Azama began—

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, but I can’t stop working. Y - you should go back with the healers, the men’s healers, and Ryoma—”

“I understand,” Ryoma said immediately. He put on a strained smile and thumped Azama on the back. “I’ll be back to check on Hinoka and the others. Come, Corrin.”

“Yeah, I—” Corrin stared at Hinoka’s room for a moment longer before smiling at Sakura. “I’ll be back, too. Come on, Setsuna!” she said as she tugged Setsuna’s arm, and Setsuna looked from the ceiling to the sick and injured to Corrin, and drifted away like a skiff cut loose from a dock, and then they were gone.

Sakura realized the nauseated feeling in her gut wasn’t sickness. It might have been relief.

 

There were others to she had to tend to. One who died in his sleep. One whose leg she helped amputate. Soldiers who would never fight again, but couldn’t safely return home. Some people thought it was better to let them die than to have them consume the army’s meager and dwindling resources.

Under her orders, surviving Nohrians were to be brought in and healed. If someone asked, she could show them the oath of healers, the protocol, what it encouraged and what it implied.

In reality, there was never a Nohrian who survived.

Hana somehow kept awake even after missing more than a full night of sleep. She knew enough about healing to help in a pinch, though she spent most of her time washing sores and checking for ticks, or with her head perched on her fist, or the whole of her slumped against the weight of her sword as she watched Sakura. She insisted she wasn’t hurt, and got flustered when Sakura finally whipped around and demanded to check, even if people were watching and even if this was technically the men’s quarters, until Hana grabbed her hands and told her, face-to-face, “Sakura, you were there! We were together the whole time, and I wasn’t hurt!”

And that startled the concern out of her, leaving her feeling small and embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” Sakura said. She glanced at the patient, who hadn’t woken despite the outburst - and would wake eventually, she had to tell herself. “I’ve been…worried.”

“Totally understandable.” Hana’s grip eased up. “I mean, Lady Hinoka, she’s—”

“Promise that you’ll tell me if you’re hurt. Even if you think it’s small.”

“Promise, promise, and promise.” She grinned and let go, picking up her sword. “Mister Perfect, on the other hand…” Hana bobbed her head his way. “He won’t even tell you if he’s tired.”

That was true - just by glancing at him, he looked like a watchful guardian, but his head was smushed against the blunt end of his lance. She envied that - his ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, even if he barely did.

“Lady Sakura?” A priestess slipped around the tunnel bend, her lantern filling the dark. Her voice was a pleasant whisper. “It’s time for us to switch. Lord Ryoma asked that you rest.”

Sakura said she would, then gently prodded Subaki awake and told him to rest, too.

“My apologies, but I’m doing the patrol tonight,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “While it seems like we finished them all off, we can never be sure.”

“Please go to sleep,” she said, her eyes watering just by the dark, exhausted swells under his eyes. “I don’t want you to fall sick.”

“Plus, you seriously need some beauty sleep,” Hana muttered, thumping his shoulder. “Well, that’s never helped you before, but it’s the thought that counts, right?”

A familiar smile returned to his face. “There’s a Nohrian saying about pots and kettles.”

“Look, Lady Sakura and I don’t want you dragging us down.” But Hana suddenly brightened. “Actually, stay awake as long as you can! You’ll get sloppy and I’ll finally get all the credit—”

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not happening.”

Fortunately, it seemed like even Subaki realized how foolish he was being, and he left (but not before assuring her - maybe himself more than her - that he’d be at her side the moment something was amiss), and she and Hana went to their own tent.

Hana fell asleep in minutes. Her breathing was steady. Sakura listened.

She didn’t know if it was the dragon’s blood in her - however thin it was - that honed her hearing, but whenever she finished her prayers and was about to settle down like this, she could hear things – Oboro singing under her breath as she went past the tents. Saizo’s fitful, gasping sleep. There were no cures for their nightmares. And for Azura’s dry cough that punctured the night - there was no cure for that, either.

Hana’s arms around her were like an anchor when her mind drifted to Azura’s stories - she thought of catacombs that stretched from Cheve to Windmire, the path of the dead. Bodies in tunnels below them, the ghosts that surely lingered there. Hands that could reach out of the ground and drag down the living.

She thought of Kaze. How he helped her find everything of hers that had gone missing, and how there was no way to describe how it felt to look into an endless, lightless void, into an earth that swallowed and clenched its jaws around its sacrifice - how it felt to cry out into the dark and hear nothing that would respond.

 

Her dream was a memory:

Hinoka busting through the line, fortress going down and blood flowing hot and the field littered with ballista shots, Hinoka’s warm, bleeding wounds and her wheezing breaths steaming in the winter air and somehow she looked so proud of herself, even though Sakura wanted to yell for her but it felt like a brick was lodged in her throat, the Nohrian in her arms cracked one last smile, even though Sakura was plugging his wounds, even though she tried to scream for help from the Hoshidans hustling and dragging their friends to safety, even though the words never came out and would never—

 

She had to pry herself from Hana’s grip so she could scramble upright and fumble with and tear up the flap and stumble out and finally, at last, breathe. 

It took a while to recover, for her breaths to become steady and deep, to know what was real and what was not. It was silent. There wasn’t a battle. The cold air alone stung her nose and throat. 

At this hour, the lanterns seemed to be floating through the empty black, people only illuminated if they were very close, voices ringing without faces. A large pile – was it part of the convoy? She approached for a better look.

There were bodies stacked up - Nohrians, stripped down to different degrees. It was against protocol, stealing from the dead, no matter how little corpses needed material goods at that point - but soldiers hid away their finds, and no one, not even Ryoma, cared enough to root out the thieves. What remained here, then, was to be burned. They didn’t have time to dig, per Nohrian rites. They had to be prepared, first. Time and time and time again proved how sickening and hard it was to do it otherwise.

Mozu once murmured: “No wonder this earth is no good, all those dead things rotting up the ground like that.”

“I’m glad you’re here. I’m not one to believe in bad luck, but it doesn’t feel right without a proper blessing,” Reina said gently. 

Sakura didn’t want to look at the dead, but there were so many of them in front of her. Her eyes kept returning to their bodies, pale, sunken, starved. Some of them she could see the ribs, the same with Hinoka at the right light - no. Sick and mottled, some of them. Eviscerated the way sky knights were taught, ripped apart through the Hoshidan technique - stop.

“It makes you think,” Reina continued. “It doesn’t matter who they are. They are brave because they don’t know any better. Then they sound so frightened when they realize just how fragile they are. And then they are gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Sakura stammered, fed up with the tears that never, ever stopped threatening her the second it was more than just her and her retainers. “I’m not – it’s not - so I - I can’t - I can’t talk about this.”

“That’s all right.” There was warmth in her tone, even though she wasn’t looking at Sakura. “You don’t have to. But Lady Sakura, I’ve had more skirmishes in this country than anyone here, and I will tell you this: If these weren’t Nohrians, they would be your own people.”

But they were hungry, she wanted to say. If we had brought more food, maybe we wouldn’t have fought them. Maybe they would’ve just left.

“They’re killers,” Reina said, so softly not a soul would awaken. “We are killers and they are killers. There’s no taking that back. It’s only a matter of who gets the other first.” 

Sakura stared at the bodies. Reina rested a hand on her shoulder.

“Lady Sakura? Let’s do the ritual. You can check on Hinoka afterward.”

 

After the ritual, Sakura waded through the medical trench, from the men’s side to Hinoka. She thought the other healers had found a way to cover up the smell, but after being out of the tents for hours, the rancid stench of blood swallowed her. People called out to her, swollen, limbless, hurt. One man even sat all the way up just to get her attention. “She’s okay, right?”

“Don’t speak to the princess like that—!” another man hissed.

“I’m just saying, if she’s not okay, I’m gone. And if you’re not doing the same, you’re a fool.”

“They’ll execute you—” 

“If she goes down, we’re all dead no matter what.”

The women were quieter, mostly sleeping. But some of them were speaking, too, quiet for a moment when they noticed a priestess passing through, speaking up when they realized it was only Sakura.

“We were going to take out the strategist,” a woman said, “and then…there was a whole gang of maligs. You couldn’t see them for the night. And suddenly, she just…comes to us. They tried beating her to death but she ripped up every last one of them. For us. You’d think she’d gone mad, but…”

There were rumpled clothes, fizzled scars they didn’t have time to heal, people who weren’t old but with faces slack and soft and wrinkled. Sometimes the healers didn’t have room to hide a death or a surgery from others, and could only hang robes or body-block to cover up what they could. It used to scare soldiers, but by now, they had all seen enough to remain only anxious, even when someone died.

She closed the curtain behind her, Hinoka peeking with one eye and opening them entirely once she recognized Sakura. She opened her mouth, but Sakura spoke up first. 

“How are you, Hinoka?”

“How are you, Sakura? Did you sleep?”

“I’m fine. May I see how you’re doing?”

Hinoka shrugged as best she could, and went through the usual post-healing routine. Sakura’s suspicions weren’t entirely confirmed until the end.

“Stretch your arms—” She did so— “Can you balance?” Only slightly, her entire body trembling with the effort - and that was that. “Hinoka, the Berserk spell did work, didn’t it?”

“No.”

“You separated yourself from the others. It worked, you just didn’t hurt us. You attacked them.” For some reason, she thought of Hinoka’s horse. It must have been so terrified; they had a special bond with their riders, and for Hinoka to be like that…

“So their plan backfired.” Hinoka sat down, evening out her thumbnail with her teeth. “It didn’t work at all.”

“How did you feel? Were you scared? Did you realize what was going on—?”

“It was fine.” Her words were coming out faster now, hands tightening on her knees. “I figured out what was happening – they were doing something with my head, so—” Hinoka shook her head. “I wasn’t scared at all.”

“I can’t let you fight.”

“I don’t have a—”

“You couldn’t even control yourself!” she tried to yell, but it came out in a pathetic, cracked squeal. “You couldn’t – you were just – tearing people apart. No one lucid could fight with the injuries you had! And now you can’t even move. I can’t – I can’t let you fight like this.”

Hinoka eyed her, and said again, “I don’t have a choice.” And then: “You don’t have a choice.” Before Sakura could even think to talk, she said, “It wasn’t that bad. I didn’t feel insane, it just felt…natural.”

“What?”

“What you just said. Tearing them apart.”

It was like ice melting in her heart, spreading through her body.

“Is it easy, Hinoka?”

“It gets easier,” Hinoka said slowly. “I don’t like killing people, not like Reina, but…you don’t second-guess yourself.”

In the past, she had felt the exact same feeling she felt now, though not as it felt now – strangled and anxious. Like she had felt at festivals and gatherings, even though this was different, Hinoka wasn’t a stranger, Hinoka was…family. They’d spoken every day. One word, two words. But words nonetheless.

“Didn’t it get easier for you?” Hinoka broke the silence. “Working with this. What you do. I don’t know how you handle it, being in here. I’d go crazy.”

“It’s easy because I’m helping people. But it…shouldn’t be easy, not for you. Mother taught us about peace, she—”

“Am I not helping people? What, you think it’s better we just - are we supposed to just roll over and die?!”

“I d-d-d-d—”

“Nothing’s wrong with me, all right?!” Hinoka’s voice rang for a second, and then she shut her mouth, and shrunk into herself. It was alarming – Hinoka wasn’t the type to shrink, not for anyone, especially not for Sakura— “Should we go outside?”

Sakura shook her head, hated this, hated herself. “I never said you had to stop. Just rest for one day. One. To ensure there aren’t lingering symptoms. Problems.”

“Sorry.” Hinoka rested her forehead in one hand. “Acting like this, it’s not part of the spell, or anything like that. I just haven’t been able to sleep.” She tested a smile. “It’s hard to sleep when you don’t know what Setsuna’s been up to…”

“Why are they your retainers? Her and Azama. They don’t seem…”

“Responsible?”

“…Capable. I was trying to make it sound less—”

“I hear that all the time.” She shrugged. “They’re my friends. They’re good at fighting.”

“You’re taking your friends into warzones.”

“Yeah.” Hinoka looked up through her bangs. It was like seeing the eyes of a wolf in tall grass. “We all are.”

“Lady Sakura?” That was the superior maiden, parting the curtains. “We need your help. There’s been no sign of Nohrian movement; it’s best we take care of the patients while we’re still able.”

“Sakura—”

Sakura followed the superior maiden immediately, couldn’t bear to hear what Hinoka had to say next. Couldn’t bear the feeling that wracked her heart—

She will die. She will die. She will die.

In one form or another, by the end of this war, Hinoka was going to be dead.

 

The deeper they delved into Nohr, the more Ryoma insisted on her safety at any cost. It was around a few months ago that he became so insistent on this, after the first time she had defied him. She had noted how the injured men, as opposed to the women, were sullen and testy, or left their tent earlier than their wounds had fully healed. The simple fact was that they had been assigned male healers, but among the few still standing were Jakob and Azama.

“They need, not people like those two, not that they are bad people—” She had kept stammering through her words, resolve shrinking under the gaze of Ryoma and the commanders bolstered in the tent, fingers still on maps. “They need healers who can, um, help them, a more delicate touch—”

At first, Ryoma wouldn’t have it, not for the way desperate and lonely soldiers looked at her when she passed through to get to the women. It took a few hours before he gave in to the reality of the situation and called her back inside, agreeing to her terms – that healers would work regardless of gender – but with a condition of his own: She would learn to fight. Just in case, he told her when he first broke the news. Yes, he knew how she felt about that. But sometimes, there was no other way to survive. “Even our mother, of all people, knew how to fight.”

Every day they weren’t fighting, one hour was dedicated to her and Orochi sitting in the tent, practicing rites to commune with the gods that ruled magic. They practiced with words, with scrolls, with cards, so everything would be instinct even if Sakura was hurt and terrified, just the same way resisting magic worked. But for her, denying its power was much easier than utilizing it.

“We all choose this path,” Orochi had explained on the first night, in a lesson Sakura had never received from the maidens in the shrine. “That’s the law of nature: No gift without sacrifice, no blessing without bloodshed. That’s all the future is – an exchange.”

Orochi was a good teacher, a retainer not only to Sakura’s mother but to the whole family. There was a party, one time, where Sakura was choking on tears and her face hot and throat hurt from all the questions people were asking, finding less and less words and terrified because neither Hana or even Subaki were of a high enough station to attend, until Orochi smashed right into the conversation while gesturing behind her back, go, go, and came to her outside and reassured her – No one noticed a thing, Lady Sakura, they’re all too absorbed in themselves to care. And as to how on earth she was allowed to get away with that breach in protocol: Well, everyone’s got secrets they can’t hide from Orochi…

(—She didn’t remember Hinoka going to that party. “I need to rest, sorry,” she had said. Her smile had been flat as she slid the door shut on Sakura before she could get a word in otherwise. Not long after that, she took the first opportunity to return to the war.)

The rituals being what they were, it wasn’t often that she and Orochi spoke beyond pleasantries, but tonight, after the army settled in a new place, Orochi folded up her spell cards and said, “You had a talk with Reina the other night, didn’t you?” She arched up her eyebrows before Sakura could respond. “Don’t ask me how I know. The cards tell me all.”

Sakura was a bit too tired to laugh. She didn’t think about Reina more than she had to. “We did. She seemed all right.”

Orochi stared at one particular little bush; there were bundles of cured plants and dried herbs hanging on the walls, sprays of potted plants that seemed to be there just to be there. “I don’t know, Lady Sakura. People take it for granted, but when it was me and her and Lady Mikoto, Reina was never this bloodthirsty. Eager to fight, yes. But not so eager to kill.”

“That’s hard to imagine,” Sakura confessed.

“It’s hard to watch.”

She thought of people dragging home Hinoka, her springing up with blood all over her body and screaming, “I got him, I got him! Ripped that fucker’s guts out and he will never bother us ever again!” A dance that went on all night. Hinoka – that had been Hinoka, Azama who had taken care of her and seen the fullest extent of her injuries. Hinoka, who had woken up later and served her sisters their breakfast without saying a word.

“I’m worried,” Sakura said, “that it’s happening to Hinoka, too.”

Orochi stared at her, appraising, and took a deep breath. “Listen to what Orochi is about to say, and never say a word of this to your sister’s face.” She steepled her fingers. “I don’t think she likes it. She’s very, very good at what she does, and she also doesn’t like it.” She drew up some magic to dim the lights. “But what she does, in her mind, is for your sake.”

How much blood would be on her hands at the end of this road, as red as her hair—

Orochi snapped her head to the tent flap and held up one finger. “Kagero—”

“Saizo.” His voice came before his silhouette. Standing in the entrance, he would have been indistinguishable from the night if it weren’t for his voice.

She grimaced. “You wouldn’t come here if you didn’t want to. What’s going on?”

“Ambush, bigger than we thought.” He motioned for Sakura to rise, and she did. “Kagero stayed to kite whoever she could.”

“Does Lord Ryoma—”

“Of course he knows!” His grip on Sakura’s shoulder would bruise. “Lady Sakura, I’m getting you to the injured.”

Orochi slammed the spell cards into Sakura’s hands and darted out after them, but broke off towards the woods, to the flashes of light. To Kagero.

Sakura could barely keep up with Saizo, even with him shepherding her. “Did Subaki come back? Where’s Hana?”

“Retreating, sounding the alarm. Stragglers from the previous engagement had been following us, and met with another detachment.” He was about to say more, but instead pivoted and when she turned, blood was already spouting out of a stranger’s throat. “Go! Hurry!”

“Be careful! We can’t lose you, too!”

“Go!” His arm went to his mouth and she thought it was a vulnerary, but he snapped off the lid and she realized - oh—

She dove into the medical tent, slamming her hands over her ears. The explosion still rattled her, and they kept coming, coming, coming with every bomb Saizo threw—

Hinoka, she realized. She had to find Hinoka. She got onto her knees, upright, this was her room, she looked up at the empty bed – no one was there. Still warm. She couldn’t have—

Another boom sent her off balance. The dirt was cold under her hands.

There were injured. There were injured who needed her help. Protection.

She crept. She peeled aside Hinoka’s cloak, tried to burgeon up a warning—

Except she wasn’t alone.

There was a Nohrian. A strategist. Ssakura recognized the staff in the crook of her elbow, the golden color, the red gem - Berserk. The woman was glancing around like she wasn’t actually sure she had gotten away with it. The patients were asleep. No. Some of them were pretending to be asleep. What else could they do but lock their eyes onto hers?

She forced her eyes away from the only other nurse in the tent, slumped where she sat, frozen from the waist down, blood still dripping down the front of her robes.

If Takumi were here, he would tense up his bow, and send an arrow like a whisper. Finished it before it began. Hana would charge in, strict with her mental state to deny any spells erupting around her. But it was Sakura instead, and slow magic manifested from the cards through Sakura’s fingers, heat pooling to the tips of her hands, her hand now moving on its own – there was another spirit in her, now, braver than she could ever be.

She cast it.

They said the bells were from the spirit world, echoing through an open door, and the ox yowled not in her ears but in her head as it shrieked through a nasty blur to the strategist, the woman couldn’t even tense before she was plowed through the women’s tent. Sakura ran after her—

Fire billowed through the other side, and the trick to all magic was that it was about a battle of philosophy and will, the injuries weren’t real if you didn’t believe them to be— But that didn’t stop it from feeling like all her bones had cracked from the heat. She wasn’t burned much but she couldn’t keep her body from shaking—

“Oh, you’re good,” the strategist breathed, turned the page to charge the next spell—

Sakura didn’t yell anything meaningful, but she yelled and slammed the strategist to the ground, whacked her with her hands and fists and got pain in her bones and joints, sharp bang as she struck cheekbones, aggravated burns—

Until there was nothing more she could pay attention to than the arrow sticking out of her shoulder.

“Lady Sakura—!”

There was a hooded bowman aiming to the man who had yelled – she knew that voice, if she’s gone, I’m gone – 

“Don’t.” Every word made her lungs burn. “Stop. They can’t fight. They—” She was not supposed to cry. Takumi never did this, that man in the woods didn’t do this, Hana never did, Hinoka never did Azura never did so why was she—

She was yanked up by her hair. “She’s right, let’s go.” The strategist’s fist was unrelenting as she turned to the soldiers who were awake and wide-eyed with fury or fear. “Lady Sakura. I like the sound of that. You tell anyone who comes in that we have Lady Sakura. Perhaps we can come to some kind of agreement.”

There was nothing more she could pay attention to than the pain. If this was anyone else, there would some way they could turn this around, fight back, not be helpless, but the cards were scattered on the trail they left behind. And in that last room before they left, she looked at Hinoka’s bedroll one last time—

In the corner. The very back corner of that tent. Hinoka, chest shaking with suppressed breaths, hand clawed over her face. Sakura got one glimpse of her dark eye as they went.

“No one’s paying attention to this route. I’ll lead the way.”

Back out in the cold sting, she was thrown over a horse – a wingless horse. The strategist got onto it, too.

“Lady Sakura?!”

The horse took off through snow and dirt and galloped all through the night. 

 

I don’t want you to fight, she should have said.

That first day, after Hinoka’s first deployment, not much older than Sakura was now. So proud of her new scar on her arm. The wide-eyed bewilderment when Sakura, tiny as she was, burst into tears and buried her face against her.

Please, she would have said, if she had been braver.

Please don’t get hurt ever again.

 

“Where is everyone? Did you call them back?”

“I just ran.”

Sakura was thirsty. She could not speak. She could not see their faces. All she saw was the jut of their chins and noses as they turned their faces in the thin arc of moonlight. She could see – one head shaking.

“Gods, boy. You could have at least. I don’t know. Tapped someone’s shoulder.”

“The least we could do,” the strategist interrupted the men – her voice was like ice – “is take down as many as we can. The rest will be exhausted. Then we’ll make an offer.”

“How many of us are—”

“Not many. Of us, and them.”

Maybe Hoshido would not notice her going missing, the way these people here did not seem to notice her. They all needed to get out of there, before the Nohrians regrouped.

There was a figure leaning in over her. Sakura shut her eyes.

“They called her lady,” the strategist said. “All those soldiers are nobles. You’ve seen how they are. They wouldn’t call her ‘lady’ if she weren’t more important than them.”

“Impeccable logic.”

“Impeccable. Where’d that come from?”

“A book.”

“Wow, you can read?”

“She can’t speak,” another soldier interrupted. “She doesn’t look like a princess at all, just some noble but no princess. Why would they bring a princess to a war?” He yanked her up by her cape. “Look. She’s tired. Ugly.” He dropped her and her face smacked into the ice.

“Well, war is ugly. None of us are looking good. She’s a princess. You could get the whole Hoshidan army stabbing their guts out for her.”

“No,” he muttered. “Bullshit. Not for this one. She’s nothing.”

The people at the shrines believed in accepting the moment as it was. She never had been good at those lessons, and all she could think of was the fact that the others were coming here. Gods above, they were going to die for her. Hana always came for her when she’d been left behind, Subaki always found her when she was lost. Corrin would carve a swath through a mountain, god of wind and god of lightning—

“What can we do to help you?” Sakura’s voice barely sounded through their hissed bickering and yet they dropped their volume. “You don’t want to fight. None of us do. I don’t think even Reina wants it like this, I don’t think—”

A cold blade zipped to her throat. The odor of sweat and dirt loomed over her. 

“Would you look at that. It can talk.” The man who had shot her.

“If you help us, you can come home with us,” she said, the knife leaning on her pulse. “Th-there are Nohrians who fight with us, you won’t be alone.”

“Can you tell me something?” The strategist knelt in front of her. “Why are they so desperate, to have a little girl in their army?”

“Why would you want someone like King Garon to rule?”

It was the ugliest laughter she’d heard in her life, louder, more pronounced than anything.

“Someone like him?! She’s no noble. Sheltered—”

“No, she’s a princess, all right!”

“Listen, maybe you’ll learn something about human nature—”

“I, me, I don’t want him. But I know he’d be better than you. You don’t know anything—”

They all went silent like the dead and turned their heads, and everything under the moon went still. There came just a murmur: “Scatter. You have to scatter. First thing I see coming that way, I berserk.”

“It doesn’t work!”

“It did work. But we were the first thing she saw, and whoever it is, as long as they don’t see us – look, just run.” 

She hoisted up Sakura with arm around her neck, not to strangle, but hurt - like Hana’s training with Subaki and the other samurai, the hadaka jime, the naked choke. She squeezed the arrow in further, and even as Sakura clenched her teeth she couldn’t stifle the whimper.

“Why not zerk the little girl?”

“What can she do?”

Sakura could do nothing.

But Hinoka – at times like this, it felt like Hinoka could do anything.

An untouchable god.

What remained of her sister at first was the spear that the strategist’s corpse seemed to have sucked into her flesh before it was yanked out, the blood shooting out like a flock of crows.

Then there was the whole red mess of her, from this angle, Sakura cannot tell what was Hinoka and what was a soldier except when one man slipped and crashed into the mud and choked on it when the spearhead went into his neck and then there was the crunch of a skull when Hinoka swung her arms back and the metal-tipped end of the pole with them—

Hana, she realized, called her name,

the very same moment a man stomped on Sakura’s shoulder and all she could focus on was that pain until it snapped into numbness and she heard the faint twang oh god and Hinoka hissed, just looks up through her bangs, the shaft sticking out of the side of her belly as she reeled off the side of the saddle but god help her, there was another shot and god help her it slammed her back upright on the saddle there are no more of those sounds there are the sharp kiais from Hana and Subaki’s gritted-teeth screams and the shriek of one of their horses the crunch of hooves beating a man the twist and the yank and the whole of him pouring out, she couldn’t pay attention and then—

There was a red light in front of her.

She tried to scramble but one arm wouldn’t respond and the other slipped helplessly, she didn’t know who had casted it other than that they promptly collapsed, and from behind her, Hinoka made a breathless sound like a faceless had punched her in the belly.

There were no more sounds of war than the wheezing gasps.

“Hana,” Subaki whispered. “Get Sakura. I can hold off Hinoka—”

“We can’t move her like this—”

“We can’t risk it.”

Sakura could finally look up again. Her face was stuffed into Hana’s shoulder as she tried to get Sakura onto her feet, and said, “Sakura, it’s going to hurt now, we’re going to heal you, I’m going to run with you, I’m going to carry you,” but - but she was straining to get her up, she was reeking of mud and blood, damp with snow, she was—

“No!” Hana screams in her hair. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Lady Hinoka!”

Everyone was so weak, so exhausted. Hinoka’s fist was shaking around the bunch of cloth she used to drag Sakura on her saddle. There was only a mumble: “She’ll die if you carry her.” Deep, shuddering breaths. “The horse is faster.”

“I swear – I swear – I swear,” Hana managed, “if you hurt her, I will—”

Sakura couldn’t hear what she would do; there was the beating of the wings and the wind blasting past her ears. There was Hinoka, mouth against her shoulder, something dripping hot through her robes. She should not have been alive, the only thing that could be keeping her alive was generations of dragon blood and even then, Hinoka should not have been able to whisper this to her:

“If I hurt you. I have a knife. On my belt. Use it.”

Sakura would never know where she found her voice. “You won’t. You can’t. You’re too—”

“I am not. I am not weak.”

Sakura’s voice choked, paralyzed, mouth open as though she had forgotten how to scream, “I can’t—”

“Don’t,” she said, “don’t speak.”

“I’m—”

“You’re not worthless.” Hinoka lifted her face just enough, so she could fully say it. “You are not worthless.”

And she said that, again, and again, and again, until the moon was gone, and it was all dark.

 

Sakura woke up during the procedure, and did not fall back asleep for a very long time. Not even after Jakob and Azama had left. She kept her ears alert, to the wind turning the night and the dark clouds, the footsteps in the snow and inside the tent, the murmurs, a crying sound from the tarp behind her. Now it was her and Hana, who, last Sakura had peeked, was hunched over in her seat, her face squashed against her hand, as she slept. Subaki, maybe, was the one pacing outside.

She did not open her eyes again until she heard Takumi’s voice, soft and distant as it was. She imagined him: Arms crossed. His jaw set, his eyes fixed. The hard glare that made him seem much older than he was. 

Sometimes, if he shot it the right way, even Hinoka couldn’t hold his gaze. Was she looking at him now?

“That’s it, isn’t it,” he was asking Hinoka, soft, tired, defeated, “in the end, we just didn’t need you enough?”

“You know I can’t be what you want me to be. You don’t know what you want from me. If I were here—”

“Maybe that’s all we wanted.”

“I would have made things worse—”

Hana jolted awake the moment Sakura moved. “Are you awake? Sakura?”

“I’ll just leave you alone,” was the last she heard of Takumi, his voice getting louder as he entered the tent. “Maybe that’s best for all of us.”

“Takumi,” Hana began, before stammering, “Sorry, Lord—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered, rushing to the bed, “is she awake?”

“She’s still asleep,” a woman hissed – the superior maiden, Sakura realized, “and for the last time, you are leaving, you are both taking after her and going to sleep—”

“No!”

“She’s my sister!”

“Then god help me,” the woman said through her teeth, “I will build you your pyres now.”

Once they were gone, once she could no longer hear their footsteps— 

“And you, Lady Sakura. Please get some rest.”

 

In this country, it was no brighter or clearer in the morning than it was at night. The few people who were awake were too busy with the patients, or on guard, to notice Sakura slipping out of the tent.

They didn't have to worry about transporting the injured anymore.

Maybe - maybe if Hinoka had been on patrol with the others—

The wet drops of sleet started whipping into her face. She only had her arms to shield herself as she squinted at the horizon, caught the red shock under the lantern that rattled in the gusts.

Hinoka’s bags were already saddled up to her horse. There was a comb resting against his back. Hinoka’s trembling fingers worked a new, clumsy braid into his mane, and when she was finished, she turned away. She must have known Sakura was coming.

“Your retainers are never letting you out of their sight again.”

Hinoka hopped onto the saddle, hunched over and pulling her cloak around her body, tighter. 

“Hinoka,” she started. “Can we talk?”

From here she can see the old blood under Hinoka’s nails. She can smell the smoke in her clothes.

“We can talk about anything.”

Both of their hearts pumped the same blood.

This should not have been as hard as it was.

It was turning colder and snowing across the frozen entrenchments. She could imagine the ghost stories coming to life, the people underground singing in the soft dirt, far below, with clambering hands to reach up and grab.

Hours later, they all plunged further into the lightless deep, where the mountains behind them grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller. With so many people around them, it should have been warm, but Hinoka’s armor still carried the cold from the air. Takumi and his retainers scouted ahead, Hana and Subaki never left her side, Azura had tried to follow everyone on foot but was now curled under Corrin’s arm, against her body, sitting in the back of cart, as Corrin whispered about how the war was almost over, that they were almost there, that they just needed to hold out. A little longer.

When Sakura couldn’t bear to watch them, she watched the snow, the snow on the mountains, growing smaller still. She thought about the snow, marred by all the filth across the earth, melting into it. Dripping down, even deeper, into darkness.


End file.
